People and Nature Before Profits!
We're a working collective of socialists, communists, and independent leftists in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!

January 3, 2013

Understanding the Crisis

By Zoltan Zigedy

For a student of Marxist political
economy, one of the last year’s highlights was the seven-part discussion of the
global economic crisis, its causes, and consequences which was featured in Socialist Voice, the excellent monthly
publication of the Communist Party of Ireland. Beginning in January with the
review of a book on the crisis, two interlocutors—identified as NC and NL--
surveyed the landscape of radical and Marxist explanations of economic crises
and their meaning for the working class movement.

Several features of the discussion were
remarkable.

First, the discussion was conducted in
a comradely and respectful manner. Much of the academic “Marxist” dialogue is
about scoring points and splitting hairs. The SV exchange, on the other hand, sought to construct and unify.

Second, the articles were free of
jargon and pretension. Too often self-styled Marxist economists feel compelled
to package their views in fashionable or “sophisticated” language to create an
aura of profundity.

Third, the dialogue owes little to
bourgeois economics. Outside of a few distinguished Marxists like Maurice Dobb,
Ronald Meek, and Victor Perlo, in the English-speaking world, training in
mainstream bourgeois economics has been more of a hindrance than a help in
grasping and advancing Marxism. Likewise, formalism—the fetish of mathematical
and logical constructs-- has elevated issues like the so-called transformation
problem or the “Okishio Theorem” to center stage at the expense of pursuing and
elaborating the insights of Marx, Engels, and their successors. In most cases,
the formalists and academicians would be well advised to return to a study of
the opening chapters of Capital, an
exercise that would render much of their exercises pettifoggery.

The Socialist Voice contributions cover briefly, but clearly and
seriously, the theories of crisis ranging from the
tendency-of-the-falling-rate-of-profit through underconsumptionism, stagnation,
long cycles, and the general crisis of capitalism. They draw on a diverse group
of theorists from Andrew Kliman and the Monthly
Review adherents through Nikolai Kondratiev and Hans Heinz Holz.

I urge everyone interested in Marxist
political economy to read them. Hopefully, this discussion will generate
further research and debate over the many issues addressed. Developing a clear
and full Marxist account of the current crisis is a work in progress. My own
thoughts, offered in the same comradely spirit, are below: